I was so glad R-Home gave me the chance to be the “Last Word” in their newly redesigned March/April issue (which is beautiful by the way!). I shared an essay about my grandmother and all the decorating advice she’s passed down to her children and […]

This piece on tackling your home’s “drop zone” appeared in the winter issue of Central Virginia HOME. In my 1960s rancher, the front door opens directly into the living room. There is no entryway, no foyer and certainly no mudroom. As a family of five […]

Touring (and then writing about) this house for R-Home made me want to run home and start rearranging furniture. Check out the turquoise barrister’s bookcase in the master bedroom. I will covet it until the day I die. Truth. They say you shouldn’t take your […]

Touch is the first sense humans acquire and has a powerful effect on our physical and emotional wellbeing. Studies have shown that people who regularly touch others have lower blood pressure and heart rates and healthier immune systems. Touch stimulates the production of oxytocin, which makes you happier, and it activates nerves and hormones that reduce stress. It’s no wonder that, in the cold, dark winter months, we look for ways to introduce more texture—or touch—into our homes.

I interviewed the coolest human ever for the Nov/Dec issue of R-Home magazine. Haleh Pedram is an upholsterer working in Oregon Hill. I’m still digging around for a copy of the piece, so for now, I’ll leave you with this quick excerpt and a link […]

There’s a lot riding on the outcome of Virginia Commonwealth University student Lacey Leonard’s undergraduate research project. With the help of some classmates, the sculpture major and filmmaker is turning a 1988 Ford 350 short bus she bought for $2,800 into an 82-square-foot Midcentury home.

I didn’t see it coming when I put my 19-month-old daughter, Florence, down for a nap one afternoon, and a few minutes later, heard her pounding on the door of her bedroom with her small clenched fists, demanding a rescue.

My husband and I once bought an upholstered chair on impulse. It was a floor model so the price was reduced, and the fabric—a bold print—initially appealed to me.

Within six months, I knew we’d made a mistake. The chair wasn’t comfortable, and it was too small for the space. Worse, the fabric was so loud, I couldn’t decorate around it. We moved the chair from room to room, hoping to find a place where it would work better. Ultimately, it came to rest in a dark corner of our unfinished basement.

In the months after he died, I came to envy people who, in the face of hardship, found peace reciting Hail Marys, Kaddishes and mantras. I wished for a string of words, no matter the origin, that might help me make sense of a world without my father in it.

It was literature—not liturgy—that had always brought me comfort, so I searched for my own peace prayer in books.

According to the National Kitchen and Bath Association, the average mid-range bathroom renovation costs more than $17,000 and—unless homeowners are extremely handy—requires the use of a general contractor. The average bathroom update, on the other hand, can cost as little as $1,000 and be accomplished by do-it-yourselfers.

Smith Mountain Lake offers plenty of outdoor recreation. There’s boating and waterskiing, fishing and sunbathing. But when Jeanne Wagoner and her late husband Joe moved to the lake in 1991 to build their dream house, Wagoner noticed something right away. The recreational pursuit her neighbors seemed to enjoy the most was studying the lake houses that dotted the shoreline of the 32-square-mile reservoir.

It’s hard to imagine Charlottesville residents can’t hear the squeals of interior designers across town when the staff at Shelter for Help in Emergencies (SHE) calls to tell them they’ve got a room in the upcoming Design House.

“It’s like Christmas when they call us about the house,” says Sheilah Michaels, who owns Sheilah Michaels Design Studio and was assigned the Design House’s living room this year.